Quality inspectors are irrelevant
IT’S counter-intuitive to some people. If there are no quality checkers, how do we ensure zero-defect products and excellent services for customers? A wrong answer was given by one factory that proudly displays a tarpaulin banner that says “Quality Starts Here” with an arrow directed to the work stations of 20 minimum-wage earners doing visual inspections of products before its delivery to customers.
Many people and organizations have the wrong impression that defects should be done by people at the end of the line. But isn’t it useless to do such impossible, gargantuan task? Imagine manually checking hundreds of thousands of items performed by hundreds of workers every day. At times, even electronic sensors could fail.
Quality inspection at the end of the line is too little, too late. There’s not much you can do, except to stop the delivery and compromise your integrity, resulting in frayed customer nerves, penalties for late delivery, and legal action, among others. This contributes to wastes that include costly repair, waiting, man hours and use of machine and materials.
Since time immemorial, Toyota and other dynamic companies know this problem. That’s how the principle of “stopping the line” came into the fore. This requires ordinary workers even without management permission to stop production, the moment they discover defects. After all, if there’s fire in the factory, you don’t seek approval of the boss before one acts against it.
It’s the same thing in the service industry. In a restaurant for instance, if the waiter sees a fly swimming in a customer’s soup, isn’t it logical that he should be the first one to act on the situation? Unless, he tells you a different story: “Don’t worry, Sir. It’s too small to consume everything.”
Joking aside, “stopping the line” is a workers’ prerogative. They’re privy to the issue and therefore, should be the first one to resolve it. No ifs, no buts. This system prevents the defective product from reaching the next process and fixes the defects until the next process owner and quality inspectors discover them.
The cure therefore is not to rely on quality inspectors at the end of the line. Otherwise, people would have the mentality of passing it on to the inspectors, under the mistaken belief that it’s his job to do just that because they’re being paid for it. On the contrary, the better approach is to establish a system where everyone regardless of his rank (including the janitors) must be responsible for quality by using several tools, including visual control or any mistake-proofing device, like Pokayoke.
If you think this is easier said than done, then think again. You’re right. Toyota has done lots of failed experiments to build quality from within. That’s why you have to do your own experiments as well.
To build quality from within, Jon Miller, co-founder of Gemba Research, recommends the creation of four pillars: One is “at the source.” There’s no better place to check defects than the place where it is being made by the person making it.
Two is “self-checks.” This includes manual or sensor checking by the concerned worker or machine, respectively. You don’t need another person, including your boss or inspector to check your work. The goal is to discover right away defects as soon as they occur.
Three is “successive checks.” Given the task of self-checking, the next process or internal customer must also do secondary checking and alert the previous processor for defects so that it will not continue doing the same mistake.
Last is “100-percent inspection.” It means “that sampling is not enough. When sampling is done at Toyota, it is typically done by group leaders, managers, or quality engineers who are doing redundant checks to audit the process.” Sampling is not done by quality inspectors at the end of the line.
If you’re convinced now that we need to eliminate quality inspectors, what happens next if you maintain defect-free products? Let me tell you this true story and be the judge:
“A California fire department claims a light bulb in their station has continuously burned for 116 years,” according to a report by Inside Edition. Tom Bramell, a retired deputy fire chief claims the bulb “has been burning continuously since 1901.”
“You’re not allowed to touch it, we don’t even dust it off.”
Inside Edition continues: “Modern fluorescent bulbs last about 20,000 hours but the bulb at the Livermore Fire Department near San Jose, California has been on for one million hours and counting.
The bulb has shined since World War I and II, the moon landing, 21 presidents, the Beatles invasion, the Kennedy assassination, 9/11, all through present day.”
By way of reflection, if you’re the manufacturer of that bulb, would you be interested to examine it so that you will not commit the same mistake?
W. Edwards Deming was right: “No defects. No jobs. Absence of defects does not necessarily build business….Something more is required.”
Rey Elbo is a business consultant on human resources and total quality management as a fused interest. Send feedback to elbonomics@gmail.com or via https://reyelbo.consulting.
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